The Father’s role in the family life is holding the family together in times of crisis. There are many examples of this throughout the parts of his life, which are revealed to us. After his parents died, ‘the whole world he had known was swept away in a week, two weeks. He was a child one moment; the next, he was in charge of a whole distraught family of children’. In the chapter ‘Feet’ we discover the sense of stability that he holds within his family, as a father, for example, his sturdiness, while comforting his wife after the death of their daughter, Una,
‘She was still crying. My father’s boots moved towards her until they were very close. He was saying something. Then he moved yet closer, almost stood on her shoes, which moved apart. One of his boots was between her feet. There was her shoe, then his boot, then her shoe, then his boot.’
Later on in the novel we realise his strength and the extent to which he loves his wife, as he stands by her and their family during her breakdown. He continues to provide the stability, which his children need, for example,
‘“What does she mean?” I would ask him. “What’s burning? What’s the matter with her?”
“It’s a kind of sleepwalking,” he would say, “dreaming. She’s upset; but don’t worry, she’ll come round and be all right.” ‘
In order to set the mother and Father in contrast to each other, Deane uses the secrets, which they are both harbouring, and the way they deal with keeping their secrets from their children and each other.
At certain points during the novel, the father draws his son into the secrets of his past, wanting to share them with him, for example, in ‘The Feud’ where the Father and son sing together, a song which the father’s parents used to sing him. This is followed by the realisation of the son, that his father wishes to tell him the burden on his mind,
‘I knew then he was going to tell me something terrible some day, and, in sudden fright, didn’t want him to; keep your secrets, I said to him inside my closed mouth, keep your secrets, and I won’t mind. But at the same time, I wanted to know everything. That way I could love him more’.
The Father’s life is unravelled by the narrator, throughout the novel, much as the life, love, hopes and fears of the Father are gradually revealed in Blake Morrison’s ‘And when did you last see your Father?’. As is commented by a critic from the ‘Reading Group Center’1, ‘the son pursues the truth until it turns his mother against him and ultimately drives him away from home, despite his painful love for his parents.’
Deane uses central images throughout the novel in order to portray ideas to the reader, for example, the incident with the roses which not only reinforces the underground burning of the family’s secret but acts as a metaphor for what is happening in Ireland. The narrator, in order to hurt his father, destroys and concrete’s over his roses, which appear to be one of the only rays of colour and light within the family’s life. By destroying this image of beauty, in anger and violence, the narrator has created a motif of torture and torment for his mother and father which almost signifies hell, for example,
‘Walking on that concreted patch where the bushes had been was like walking on hot ground below which voices and roses were burning, burning.’
